{"id":338369,"date":"2026-09-04T21:02:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T21:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/338369\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T21:02:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T21:02:54","slug":"did-violence-in-times-square-and-on-the-brooklyn-bridge-change-how-people-feel-about-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/338369\/","title":{"rendered":"Did violence in Times Square and on the Brooklyn Bridge change how people feel about NYC?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York City Police Department proudly boasted this week<\/a> that this has been the city\u2019s \u201csafest summer\u201d for many categories of major crimes. You wouldn\u2019t know it from the week\u2019s most prominent headlines.<\/p>\n

In Times Square on Monday, a woman was shot and killed<\/a> by police after she fatally stabbed someone and injured another. Friday morning, the NYPD shot and killed a man<\/a> it says threatened officers with a knife and claimed to have a bomb on the Brooklyn Bridge.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re incidents in some of the city\u2019s most iconic spaces \u2014 and it would be hard to blame New Yorkers or visitors too shocked by the violence to consider the rosier picture painted by the official stats.<\/p>\n

And yet, when Gothamist spoke with almost 20 people Friday near the Brooklyn Bridge and Times Square, many were unaware that either incident had ever happened. None of those who knew said they felt unsafe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for the amount of people that live here, if that’s the worst crime that’s happened this week, that’s not too bad,\u201d said Kristal Miller, an Australian visitor who walked the Brooklyn Bridge Friday. She said things are worse at home.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, data shows that New York City is a safe place<\/a> to live and travel. Shootings, murders and other major crimes are down \u2014 though the city is continuing to see increases in felony assaults and hate crimes that buck the overall trend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOftentimes what happens is that high profile incidents like these end up overshadowing the more aggregated data about the safety of the city. The data does show that New York is safer than it has been before,\u201d said Asad Dandia, the Brooklyn Borough Historian and the founder of a walking tour company called New York Narratives.<\/p>\n

The fear connected to major crime has often been divorced from the statistical realities. Gothamist previously reported that in 2021<\/a>, all categories of major crimes were significantly lower than two decades prior \u2014 but polls found New Yorkers much more worried about crime and safety.<\/p>\n

Perceptions of safety can also be affected by where you live. Criminal activity tends to be most persistent around \u201c\u201chot spots\u201d where safety issues persist<\/a>, even as the overall safety of the city improves. And experts say incidents of felony assault can particularly increase fears of out-of-control crime.<\/p>\n

But this week, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told Gothamist the feedback he was getting from residents<\/a> suggested the perception of safety was starting to line up with the statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are telling me they feel safer than they felt before. They’re starting to believe the numbers. They’re starting to feel it,\u201d Gonzalez said.<\/p>\n

Dandia, who gives tours all over the city, said visitors do ask if the city is safe to freely walk around in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s well intentioned, right?\u201d Dandia said. \u201cThey’re asking because they genuinely don’t know, or what they do know of New York is what they’ve seen in movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, called Friday morning\u2019s incident, and the recent death in Times Square, a tragedy that rattled the community. But pedestrians continued to flow into Times Square throughout the week just the same \u2014 Harris said they did so in increasing numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople wanna be here. They will always come,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

Carly Merz and her mom, Sarah Robinson, were in Times Square Friday, visiting the city for the first time. They heard about the incidents on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could happen anywhere,\u201d Merz said. And Robinson said she agreed.<\/p>\n

Some New Yorkers who spend day in and day out in the city say they know that the incidents this week are outliers. But they said they\u2019re still worth heeding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should be a call to action for us to do a better job of dealing with the people who are suffering with mental illness on our streets,\u201d Harris said. \u201cThe citizens of New York City and those suffering with mental illness are the victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koamivi Todo, who has worked for a tour bus company in Times Square for nearly a decade, said, in the meantime \u201cwe just pray [to] God to not be in the wrong place in the wrong time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dandia said most of the people he interacts with know that incidents like this week\u2019s are outliers, and that\u2019s why they attract so much attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the same time, it also reveals to us some of the cracks in the system,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York City Police Department proudly boasted this week that this has been the city\u2019s \u201csafest summer\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-338369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}